The physics behind the CLEO web simulation,
explained by a novice for other novices.

The goal of high energy particle physics: test our understanding of the components that make up our world for high energy conditions

Why? Concepts that seem to hold during ordinary conditions clearly fail under extreme conditions. This gives rise to interesting physics:

To explain extremely small things, we have to use the rules of quantum physics

To explain extremely fast things, we have to use relativity

Currently, we don't have a full understanding of how heavy, rare particles behave. These particles are produced only at high energies. Here at CLEO, we investigate such oddities as the bottom quark and the charm quark. Have a look at the Standard Model to know more about how these heavy quarks fit into our model of the world.

One of the most puzzling mysteries is that of CP violation. All types of particles have an antimatter twin, which explode on contact with the particle. For instance, the electron has an antimatter particle named the positron. However, there are vastly more regular particles than antiparticles (more electrons than positrons by a great degree). There seems to be no reason why particles would be favored. We call this odd phenomenon CP violation.

At CLEO, we collide electrons with positrons at high energy. These collisions create the heavier particles, and we can see unusual interactions that we would never observe otherwise.